Posts tagged as "meetings" - Chris Hardie

The Times of Northwest Indiana published an editorial at the end of August, reprinted in today's Palladium-Item, noting the importance of screening candidates for office on their views about public access laws.  Since increasing the transparency and accessibility of the work done by Richmond's City Council is a primary part of my own interest in serving on Council, I appreciate this emphasis. In the editorial, five questions were posed as suggestions for citizens to ask of candidates, with the imperative...

In every organizational conversation, there's some process for setting the agenda of what the conversation will be about, and how it will be conducted.  Usually there's a subset of the organization's members who set that agenda - sometimes just a single person - shaping the issues and decisions that the organization takes on. In a non-profit organization board meeting, it might be the Executive Committee or the board chair. In a small business, it might be the business's owners or managers. In...

Are you trying to sabotage your organization by reducing productivity? Are you trying to frustrate and dis-empower your co-workers? Do you have a laser-like focus on poor communication? If so, then you'll appreciate these six tips for how to run a meeting poorly: Really RUN the meeting. Make it known that you're in charge and that this is your meeting - nothing will be discussed or decided unless you are the one initiating and guiding it. If someone else tries to show leadership in the conversation,...

One of the downsides of working in a field where so much is beholden to the almighty billable hour is that my brain has started to re-wire itself to engage the day in terms of one-hour chunks.  This model is reinforced by other phenomena in life - calendaring software like iCal and Google Calendar make it easy to parcel out the day in discrete bits of time, beeps, alarms and bells go off on the hour mark in many workplace and educational settings, and then there's the cultural convention that "all...

Tonight's meeting of the City of Richmond Plan Commission was an interesting peek into the world of how urban planning in towns like Richmond takes place. It was apparently one of the only times for citizens to comment on the plan in its final form, though of course the whole process of developing the plan has involved public input all along. The meeting was only lightly attended, and after some procedural hiccups in dealing with some unrelated business, a good 15% of the folks there cleared...

The "Town Hall meeting" with Congressman Mike Pence this morning at the Leland Residence was fairly well attended (compared to similar such events, not as a function of the district's population) and interesting, I thought. Pence talked about his recent decision not to join the congressional leadership so that he could continue to pursue his ideals and issues (limited government, strong defense, "traditional moral values," etc.), about his two major concerns for the year (deficit reduction and border...